Ralph Nader, apparently
stonewalled in his attempts to block the Alex Rodriguez trade, has thrown
his hat in the presidential ring again. In response, people are masturbating
in their office, shoving people on subway platforms, watching other people
urinate and lamenting that ESPN really sucks now. It's another week at
The Black List, and everyone has gone bat-bonkers.

In other news, we at Camp Bowery, worldwide headquarters of The Black
Table, have decided that Drew Barrymore is getting too chunky. But that's
nothing compared to Adam Sandler. Hey, Adam it's called Atkins.
Or, jeez, it's called eating something other than corn dogs.

As always, you can submit to the Black List using the form on the right
side. Here are 11 reviews of wholesome fruity goodness.

--BT

The Black Table
needs your help! Every week, we need reviews of the latest media-related
crud, new products from Capitalists and odd idea, concept or trend. All
you need to have is a sharp opinion that you can distill down to one paragraph
of 150 words and give a letter grade. To submit, please fill out the form
below. Entries may edited for length, style and clarity. Hit us with your
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Type your review here. And remember
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Before you submit anything, ask
yourself the following: Have I put a grade on my review? Have I read
this thing at least once? Will anyone care what I wrote? If the answer
is NO to any of those questions, break down and cry, knowing you're
a failure who can't do anything right. You stupid face head moron!

RALPH NADER RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT, AGAIN: Not content with fucking
us over four years ago, Ralph Nader has tossed his biodegradable hat into
the presidential ring yet again. For most of his 70 years, Nader has been
an admirable activist and consumer advocate. His observations on the corrupt
state of our government are right on. For some reason, though, he can't
see past his own electoral grandstanding and looming threat as a spoiler.
What could maybe be excused as an old-fashioned lefty's reaction to eight
years of selling out by the Clinton/Gore White House has no excuse this
year. With the exception of Nader and the usual gaggle of cooks, everyone
to the left of Josef Goebbels is willing to fall in line behind the Democratic
Party's candidate to save our homeland from George W. Bush. Nader is either
hell bent on destroying what's left of his reputation with this grotesque
act of public masturbation, or he's the most brilliant Republican Party
operative since Lee Atwater. Either way, we're screwed. F -- Matthew
Sheahan

CLUELESS BASTARDS ON ESCALATORS: I take the subway everyday. I
deal with crowds, pushing, shoving, inappropriate touching, crazy people
yelling at invisible antagonists, you name it. This is all standard operating
procedure on the subway. Fine. What drives me crazy are the people who
step off the escalator and then just stand there. What the fuck? They've
had the whole fucking ride to decide what to do when it ends, yet they
step off and stand motionless, looking around, blankly. Meanwhile, the
rest of us coming off the escalator have no where to go. We end up pushing
past these stationary nitwits who give US a dirty look for shoving past
THEM.

What goes through their heads? Is there some epidemic out there that
causes temporary memory loss on the escalator? Is it possible that they're
just THAT stupid? F -- "Mike
Hunt"

BEATING OFF AT WORK: You spend almost eight hours a day, five
days a week staring through sleep-deprived, bloodshot eyes at the dull
glow of your computer monitor, nicotine-stained fingers moving dully across
your crumb-strewn keyboard, one eye stealing furtive glances at the clock
at the bottom of your screen. It's a grind, but nothing lifts one's spirits
quite like a refreshing wank-break. Tuck that dog-eared copy of "Swank"
into a file folder, saunter casually off to the bathroom and give yourself
a hand. (Just make sure the bathroom in question is one that's as far
away from your work area as possible; the last thing you need is your
boss slipping on some stray splooge or something). You'll head back to
your desk a more relaxed, clear-headed and focused individual. In fact,
Iguarantee that those first few minutes of post-orgasmic bliss will be
the most productive ones you'll have all week. Not to mention the fact
that you're actually getting paid for it. A -- Fresh

ESPN's "DREAM JOB": Even for fanatical sports fans such,
ESPN's "SportsCenter" has been become all-but-unwatchable in
recent years. Once an indispensable part of every sports fan's day, the
show has been weakened by filler, nonstop shilling of other network programming
and, worst of all, preening anchors who never let the highlights get in
the way of their repetitive, tiresome cliches. Now we have "Dream
Job," a sort of "Project Greenlight" knockoff in which
the winner of a nationwide contest will have a chance to assume a "SportsCenter"
anchor chair, despite having no television training whatsoever. Reality
shows, as many have pointed out, thrive on humiliation. It's funny to
watch someone sing badly, write/direct badly, date badly or do business
badly. Watching them anchor badly is more painful than any of them. It
doesn't help that the contestants chosen opt for the same rote-resitation-of-rap-cliches-by-white-people
that's so grating among the current "SportsCenter" lineup. ESPN,
what happened to you? C- -- Stephen
Silver

ALL THE PLASTIC BAGS UNDER THE SINK: Why do roommates feel the
need to save every plastic grocery bag that comes through the front door?
I understand that those bags' life cycle shouldn't end once the bruised
fruit from C-Town gets home, but there's no way that we need a legion
of them under the sink. Let's do the math: My two roommates go shopping
and get four grocery bags, each double bagged, once per week. That's 16
right there. Then there's the frequent outtings to Duane Reade, the liquor
store, Blockbuster, The Sandwich Taco Place. Now we're talking about 29
bags a week. Bags are good for lining little trash cans and maybe bringing
my lunch to work like the pauper that I am. But I certainly don't bring
lunch 20 times a week, and those baby-garbages largely go ignored anyway.
Unless they're planning on relocating and using strictly C-Town bags to
pack their belongings, I'm gonna keep throwing them out every time I'm
barred from grabbing the Fantastik under the sink because my hand can't
penetrate the mass of balled-up plastic. D+ -- Shawna
Michaud

THE WORLD'S GREATEST NUTRI-GRAIN ADVERTISMENT:WATCH
IT HERE. Enter a drab, everyday office, as a faceless, mustached drone
ignores incessant telephones. But then he takes a bite of a Nutri-Grain
bar. Suddenly he feels GREEEEAT! And off he goes, tearing through
cubicles, proposing marriage, being punched in the stomach, screaming
in rapture. This (presumably?) fake ad for Nutri-Grain breakfast bars
is the brainchild of director Justin Reardon and Turnpike Films, and it
is uproarious. If this were a real ad, I promise, I will eat nothing but
Nutri-Grain bars until I'm excreting foliage. A -- Will
Leitch

PEEING IN AN INDONESIAN COMMUNAL URINAL: JAKARTA -- Welcome to
the weird & cool CAFE
BATAVIA, situated in the colonial 'hood of downtown Jakarta. The CB
is worth a stop over if only to see the urinal in the men's bathroom.
Imagine a urinal where you walk into an open rectangular area, with one
of the lengths removed, so it's more like a 2-D box. On the opposite wall
and to either side are floor-to-ceiling mirrors. On the floor beneath
your feet is a grate and this is where you urinate. You stand and
pee next to whomever is next to you & try, just try, to NOT look at
his waggy member, which is your direct line of sight, thanks to the mirror.
Laws of reflection dictate that if you can see his, he can see yours,
so everyone in the line-up is in the same state of exposure. As you start
to leak, the grate's AI systems sense the urine & initiate a waterfall
flow from the top of the large opposing mirror down to the floor. Focus
is lost, and the mirror image blurs, when the water that ran down the
length of the mirror to the grate washes the mello yello down to Indonesian
sewer oblivion. Big fun. B+ -- Marin
Dobson

BEING A LAWYER: When you finally realize that becoming an astronaut/ballerina/supermodel/doctor
is simply not feasible because you hate heights/are 6'1" and 250
lbs/are not photogenic/don't like blood or people, you will be stuck with
your fallback career choice which hopefully is not attorney at
law. That is, unless you love reading until your eyes bleed, getting assignments
at 8:30 on a Friday night, due Monday morning, reviewing 100 page documents
that read like tomes written in ancient Cyrillic, having a boss with "quirks"
(i.e., enjoys screaming and/or throwing staplers, likes to work from 4:30
a.m. to midnight and can't understand why you don't have the same schedule),
sitting for so long your ass loses feeling and hearing your kid say mistakenly
calling your babysitter Mommy. Oh, and those law school diplomas make
some mighty fine toiletpaper; that's all they're good for if you want
out of the legal profession. Word to the wise: Put a little more thought
into your fallback career choice. Wish I did. D+ -- Aimee
Cohen

DIET COKE WITH LIME: When I first heard about this I thought it
was a joke. Lime? Isn't lime the worst fruit? After all, who really wants
the green Lifesaver? Actually Diet Coke with Lime is not half bad, far
less chemical tasting than Diet Coke with Lemon (close your eyes, and
you'll think it's Lemon Pledge) and without the hypersweet taste that
plagues Diet Coke with Vanilla. The fake lime flavor cuts through the
taste of the brain-rotting artificial sweeteners giving it a taste more
like an actual beverage. But I do think that they are hitting the bottom
of the flavor-added barrel here. What's next? Diet Coke with Grape? Diet
Coke with Absinthe? Why not do something really revolutionary and make
Tab more widely available? With absinthe, that could be perfect.
B -- Deidre
Woollard

THE DREAMERS: If nothing else, Bernardo Bertolucci's "The
Dreamers" gives us a good idea of what Quentin Tarantino's sex fantasies
must be like: Three people lock themselves in a house for weeks on end
quizzing each other about obscure film dialogue, and the losers must perform
submissive sex acts. The main problem here: The sex outweighs the meditations
on art and life. The story devolves into "Home Alone" directed
by Joe Eszterhas. Clearly this is homage, but to what? The joy of movies
or teenage underwear models? Bertolucci doesn't seem to know. At any rate,
he failed to see that spermy nostalgia is probably the worst way to honor
the French New Wave cinema of the Sixties. Francophiles whose DVD collections
sport dozens of Criterion and Fox Lorber titles will thrill to the detailed
scene-setting and spliced film clips, but the characters' complete lack
of psychological interest mostly renders these inert. There is one culturally
revealing scene, however. If you thought the misguided French obsession
with Jerry Lewis was an aberration, wait until you see thousands of zany
Gauls proudly marching into the future carrying Soviet flags. C
-- Nick Shuit

"THE BRAND" ARTICLE IN THE NEW YORKER: Every once in
a while an article, book or movie comes along that inspires you to walk
the straight and narrow and avoid prison at all costs. For me, it's David
Grann's article on the Aryan Brotherhood in the anniversary issue of <EM>The
New Yorker</EM>. Forget about all the stabbing, stranglings and
beatings; it's the amount of stuff that you have to shove up your rectum
on a daily basis that's got me donating to my local policeman's brotherhood
association. Every other paragraph someone's stuffing something up their
ass, both voluntarily and against their will. A rubber balloon full of
heroin I can fathom, but a ten-inch long, razor-sharp steel bar from a
prison door?! Wow. That's some Cirque du Soleil shit! And here I was thinking
Sam Waksal's probably got it easy. B+ -- Sam
Penn